Bill Ayers is the former head of the Weather Underground Organisation.Source:News Limited

THE goal was to overthrow the American government — by any means possible.

They targeted and bombed police memorials, the Pentagon, and the State Department, officially declaring war against the Government in early 1970.

They fought against what they perceived to be a senseless war in Vietnam, racially-charged oppression at home, and numerous other crimes committed by the US government against its own citizens.

Bill Ayers was the leader of the Weather Underground Organisation, which unleashed the biggest campaign of terror committed on US soil. The organisation bombed over 20 government buildings during the early 70s, including the New York City Police headquarters, a San Francisco army base, a number of courthouses, the Harvard Center for International Affairs, The New York Department of Corrections, and the Pentagon.

“I don’t regret using every ounce of my energy — and every tactic and tool and weapon I could find — to fight against war and racism”, Ayers tells news.com.au.

Each attack was presented as retribution for an act committed by the US Government: The bombing of Capitol Hill was in response to the American invasion of Laos. Despite the explosive means of protest, the group took pains to ensure there was no loss of human life. Ayers claims no civilians were killed during the bombings.

By 1976 the group began to dissipate, and the FBI’s illegal means of obtaining evidence against the Weather Underground meant that most of the organisation’s members were never charged with any crimes.

Ayers has remained politically active, and is inextricably linked to the current US election madness in a number of ways.

During the 2008 election cycle, President Obama was widely lambasted when it was revealed he and Ayers were associates: They served on a board together, lived four blocks apart, were once speakers on the same panel, and Ayers made a small campaign contribution of $200 to Obama’s Senate run in 2001.

Although both have played down the connection since, the Republican party claimed at the time that he was a political adviser to Obama. Ayers dismisses this theory.

“We knew one another, yes. We don’t really share a general philosophy. He has accurately said that he is a moderate liberal, pragmatic and mainstream US politician. The right-wing claims he is a wild-eyed socialist, hidden Black Nationalist, secret Muslim who pals around with terrorists. Nothing in his career points to any of that.

“I, on the other hand, am indeed a socialist, anarchist/communist, activist, and revolutionary.”

Donald Trump has even gone so far as to claim that Ayers ghost-wrote Obama’s memoir Dreams From My Father, which is scarcely credible enough to even acknowledge.

Ayers recently went to a Trump rally, and was horrified by what he saw.

“He has created the conditions for a base of violent white supremacists, nativists, and crypto-fascists to find one another and cohere in a cause”, Ayers says.

“This is terribly dangerous in the long run. This is the first time in decades that this base has been so mobilised and so dangerous. Long after Trump loses the national election, progressive and fair-minded folks will be forced to deal with an empowered and enlivened white-supremacist movement.”

Ayers has since pursued a career in academia — he is a retired professor at the University of Illinois — and a new book, Demand The Impossible!, shows he is still at war with the US government, even if he is no longer leading the charge.

“Today’s activists are smarter, better informed, filled with more positive energy, and facing interlocking crises that are more visible and apparent than ever”, he tells news.com.au. “Of course, radical fundamental change can still be achieved.

“Another world is coming — it could be a world of nuclear war and work camps and increasing degradation, or it could be a world of more democracy, more transparency, more justice. It depends on us — all of us.”

Bill Ayers pictured in 1982. AP Photo/David HandschuhSource:Supplied

He points to recent peaceful protests, such as NFL player Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand for the national anthem, as representing a new, switched-on way to affect change.

“His protest did in fact open a flood gate”, Ayers claims. “When he refused to ritually stand up for the US war anthem, it was a solitary act of courage. He had no idea what the impact, if any, would be. There were no guarantees whatsoever. But he quickly found allies, and he discovered friends and comrades he didn’t know he had. The gesture spread like wild fire. This is always true: the day before any revolution, it’s impossible; the day after, it seems inevitable. Protest can shake the regimen to its core.”

With Trump supporters representing the negative effects of mobilising people, and with the benefit of age and hindsight, what does Ayers regret about his militant days with the Weather Underground?

“I regret the tendency toward dogma, sectarianism, and self-righteousness that was a poison in the movement for several years”, he admits, “and is a danger within many groups even now.”

Ayers believes the late ‘60s, when the Weather Underground came into being, was a nascent time, politically speaking.

“Whatever the 1960s represents to people — the devil’s own workshop to the conservatives, peace and love and sunshine to the dreamers — in reality, that period was mostly prelude”, he explains. “The Black Freedom Movement was defining the moral terrain; US wars of aggression were exposed and opposed; women were rising; saving the planet moved to centre stage; the rights of workers in the fields was massively recognised.”

Of course, as Ayers acknowledges, violence will always be a factor.

“We live in a system defined by violence; our economic and political and social relationships are undergirded by violence. Changing that will surely involve conflict. Violence — especially violence wielded by the powerful defending their positions and their ill-gotten gain — will rear its head and become visible. But the weapons of the weak are mostly our imaginations, our courage, our cause, our massive numbers.”

Ayers remains a fierce opponent of the US government. Although his core belief system hasn’t changed since the late ‘60s — “I still believe that US imperialism is the greatest purveyor of violence on this earth”, he says, among other statements — there seems to be a sense of real hope in his message.

“I still believe that what we do — or fail to do — can make a difference, and that diving into the wreckage and swimming as hard as we can toward a distant, indistinct, but hopeful shore is the only way I want to live.”